What We Keep

The goldfish was still alive, against all odds. Three years after Marcus's funeral, and the stupid carnival prize he'd won on our first date kept swimming in its diminishing circle of water, refusing to die like everything else between us.

I stood in his apartment that his sister was clearing out, surrounded by boxes labeled DONATE and TRASH, clutching the bowl like it held something sacred. Which was ridiculous. Marcus had been many things—brilliant, frustrating, emotionally unavailable—but he was not a man who particularly cared about fish. This was just an accident of survival.

"You want that?" Sarah asked from the doorway, not unkindly. She'd aged five years in three months, grief carving hollows beneath her eyes that no amount of foundation could hide. "It's just a fish, Elena."

"It's the last thing." The words came out sharper than intended.

She held up her hands, palms outward, the universal gesture of surrender. "Take it. Take whatever you want. God knows we can't deal with all of it."

The refrigerator hummed in the corner, its door slightly ajar. Inside, a bag of spinach had turned to slime in the crisper drawer—Marcus's attempt at health, his resolution to live better, the one that started the week before the accident. I remembered making fun of him for it. I remembered the way he'd laughed, that crinkle around his eyes that made me forgive him for almost everything.

Almost.

We'd promised to be friends first, lovers second. That was the lie we told ourselves to justify crossing lines we shouldn't have. But friendship doesn't survive betrayal, and love doesn't survive timing. When he died, we were neither. Just two people who knew each other too well to be strangers and not enough to be anything else.

The goldfish surfaced, mouth breaking the water in small, desperate gasps.

"What are you going to do with it?" Sarah asked.

I looked at the fish, at the slime-covered spinach, at the life Marcus had built without me in it. "Change its water," I said. "See if it can learn to swim in something new."